Armageddon, Texas

“The stories of Beowulf and Genesis are played out across a post-apocalyptic Texas in a book that is not only witty and exciting but wickedly smart to boot. Thirty years ago, the world ended—most of humanity is gone, half of the American South is underwater, and the other half is turned to unforgiving desert. No one under the age of fifty is left, except for a boy and a girl who are maybe aliens, don’t have belly buttons, and can talk to animals. Oh yeah, and there’s a dragon. And a monster and his mother. If the story is starting to sound familiar, it’s guaranteed you’ve never read it like this.

Tommy Zurhellen is a master craftsman. Each chapter is written from a different character’s perspective, and he captures each voice perfectly, from Eve’s disdain for paragraphs to Adam’s insistence that “accordion” means “according” to Dog’s direct discourse with the reader. Eve is recast as the smarter and braver of the pair, a feminist who will have none of these old world gender constructs, thank you very much. Allusions are made to everything from classical Greek mythology to Breaking Bad. And when it’s least expected, Zurhellen packs a wallop of a punch with a breathtaking image: “In the beginning, everything was poetry. Before God invented water or air or amoebas or even sunlight, there was poetry.” – Foreword Reviews

“Zurhellen’s Beowulf mashup is the perfect foil for making fire-breathing dragons a thing in Texas.” – Drunken Boat

Check out Tommy Zurhellen’s “Armageddon, Texas” out by @AtticusBooks . Part three of his Messiah Trilogy. One hell of a read. #dragonday

“Wherever you fall on the post-epic/neo-epic/neo-gothic/post-irony/speculative/K-Mart continuum of post-WW2 fiction, Tommy Zurhellen can meet you where you’re at, then drag race you to the finish line, in his brilliant Armageddon, Texas, a dénouement to a trilogy, and tantalizing TBC lure for Zurhellen’s future weddings of fable, fiction, and funeste.

Read him — and his cast of unlikely apostles Ben, Hyatt, Daylene Hooker — resurrect in prose as deft and convincing as The Revelation according to St. John.” – Virginia Konchan, author of Vox Populi

The third and final volume of The Messiah Trilogy: What may have started as a modern retelling of the New Testament has evolved into a post-apocalyptic romp of two ancient tales: the biblical account of Genesis and the medieval pagan poem, Beowulf, complete with story character parallels and a fire-breathing dragon.

In anticipation of this unforgettable conclusion to The Messiah Trilogy, whet your appetite and read an excerpt from Chapter 4 titled, “Two Great Lights.”